It was seen in a former chapter that Horace, as the literary lawgiver of his age, encouraged the cultivation of the great forms of poetry, especially of the tragic drama, with the view apparently of imparting to it an artistic perfection equal to that attained by epic, didactic, and lyrical poetry. The substance of poetry was to be sought in a true criticism of life. The great Greek writers were still to be followed as models of artistic execution; and it was accepted as an article of critical faith that the older Greek writers were the best—

He, alone among his contemporaries, will have nothing to do with the Alexandrian poets. He came more and more to regard the function of the poet as, in the main, an ethical one, and to demand that above all things he should be of use to his generation. He evidently thought little of the art of those among his younger contemporaries who alone produced works which still live. He speaks disparagingly of the form and substance of elegiac poetry. To the metre he applies the epithet ‘trifling,’ exiguus. While to the hexameter he assigns the sphere of war and heroic deeds, to the iambic that of dramatic action and dialogue, to lyrical measures that of celebrating the praise of gods, heroes, or victors in the games, and the loves and gaiety of youth, he limits the function of the elegiac metre to the expression of sorrow, and to inscriptions on votive offerings—